Netgear Nighthawk A7000 massive ping increase at random

Hey everyone, I'm writing this reply because I've fixed the problem and I'm hopeful this will work for you and for anyone that googles the same issue. 

I have an A7000. It worked fine for a week or so and then started having lag spikes every 10-20 seconds. After trying everything and being unable to solve it, I came across something that worked for me: 

I found a reddit post in which a user described the same issue and posted a solution. The summary: you need to disable autoconfiguration logic because our wifi cards are polling for new networks and that's what's causing the spike. Here's a link to the post: https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/3ahg59/fix_for_wireless_ping_spikes/ and here's the content in its entirety: 

in your windows cmd, type in

netsh wlan show settings

and one of the last things might say

Auto configuration logic is enabled on interface "Wireless Network Connection"

if that's the case, then type in

netsh wlan set autoconfig enabled=no interface="Wireless Network Connection"

It should respond with

Auto configuration has been disabled on interface "Wireless Network Connection".

If it doesn't, then you might have mistyped your interface=" part. Check in your adapter settings, you might have Wireless Network Connection 2 or 3 etc.

This will definitely stop your wireless card from searching for nearby networks and updating your signal quality when you're not asking it to- which is what is causing the spikes.

You will need to turn it back on if you disconnect or need to be able to find nearby networks again. To do so change disabled to enabled from the earlier command or copy pasta

netsh wlan set autoconfig enabled=yes interface="Wireless Network Connection"

Good Luck!